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Author Topic: We've come a long ways in 100 years.  (Read 819 times)

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Offline JohnnyReb

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We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« on: January 13, 2009, 08:19:32 AM »
"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not
upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle
to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win
victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on
his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."
 
-Theodore Roosevelt
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“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” - Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."  Stalin

Offline Eupher

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2009, 08:27:11 AM »
 :thinking:

Yeah, WTF happened?  :argh:

Why is narcissism the Way of the Nation? Why is whining, texting, and wi-fiing the Way of the Nation? Why is American Idol even on the silly-assed tube rather than on the cutting room floor? Why does Hollyweird exist anymore? Even Clint Eastwood movies suck anymore - don't believe me? Go see Gran Torino.

Witnessing some of the absolute garbage on DU and knowing that a significant percentage of the population embraces that shit is mind-boggling.

Were the Sixties THAT bad? 

[/mini-rant]

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Offline DumbAss Tanker

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2009, 08:54:32 AM »
Humans put a lot of energy into their lives, once the true challenges to well-being are off the table for the vast majority, that energy has to go somewhere, and generally it then goes into an inbred preoccupation with the silly, stupid and unimportant things in life, where a willingness to sacrifice to improve things festers into a focus on security and stasis to eliminate risk, and those small and stupid things then become the focus of a decaying and morally bankrupt society.  It appears to be the inevitable result of widespread prosperity in human history, usually only closed out by hungry outsiders wreaking wide scale havoc and thereby either presenting brand-new challenges or wiping out the complacent and taking their stuff.   
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Offline Rebel

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2009, 05:36:05 PM »
Quote from: JohnnyReb on January 13, 2009, 08:19:32 AM
"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not
upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle
to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win
victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on
his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."
 
-Theodore Roosevelt

My new sig.  :bow:
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NAMBLA is a left-wing organization.

Quote
There's a reason why patriotism is considered a conservative value. Watch a Tea Party rally and you'll see people proudly raising the American flag and showing pride in U.S. heroes such as Thomas Jefferson. Watch an OWS rally and you'll see people burning the American flag while showing pride in communist heroes such as Che Guevera. --Bob, from some news site

Offline Thor

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2009, 11:18:48 PM »
Eupher, apparently you and I were just a bit too young to realize the negative impact that the 60s truly had on our successive generations. I thought the 60s were pretty good, but I was just a young lad. Of course, I wasn't part of the hippie generation.

DAT, spot on. It seems as if some people are trying to make themselves matter, too.
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Offline Eupher

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2009, 08:38:51 AM »
Quote from: Thor on January 13, 2009, 11:18:48 PM
Eupher, apparently you and I were just a bit too young to realize the negative impact that the 60s truly had on our successive generations. I thought the 60s were pretty good, but I was just a young lad. Of course, I wasn't part of the hippie generation.

DAT, spot on. It seems as if some people are trying to make themselves matter, too.

I remember the 1968 elections very well, even to the point that I - like a lot of kids my age (I was 12) - essentially trumpeted the political line of my parents.

My mother was an unabashed racist, though she did her best to hide it. I took my cue from her and even made a presentation in class about how cool George Wallace was.  :o

Later, the hippie thing became more and more fashionable and I adopted more of a "progressive" view.

It took a few years in the Army, witnessing how corrupt, incompetent, and utterly useless most governments are in order to see the light.

I believe that we, as a Nation, have grown accustomed to the nanny-state and are all too comfortable allowing those same hucksters to bilk us out of our own hard-fought resources, shove more senseless government regulation down our throats, and allow those same hucksters to operate under special rules crafted by themselves for themselves.

Quote from the 1976 movie "Network":

Quote
Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
Howard Beale: [shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, *******it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]
Howard Beale: 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
Howard Beale: [screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
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Offline Wineslob

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Re: We've come a long ways in 100 years.
« Reply #6 on: January 14, 2009, 12:24:15 PM »
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“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

        -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC (106-43 BC)

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